Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

This article analyses how the literary legend “The Queen of the Baltic Sea”, authored by Ludwik Adam Jucevičius, spread in Lithuania and Poland in the 19th and 21st centuries. The literary legend was first published in 1839 in Polish with a Lithuanian text of the sea goddess song. In this article, we focus on the spread of this work in non-academic Polish folklore collections. The research reveals how the text of the legend changed in the collections of legends, tales and fairy tales, how lituanistic details were preserved or lost, and who was referred to as the author of the work. The work shows the significance and problematics of folklore sources and their relationship with children’s literature.

A mansionary (from the Latin mansio, ‘a dwelling’) was a member of a community of four to ten secular priests governed by a provost and required to reside by and serve a chantry chapel, similar to a cathedral canon or beneficed chantry priest. Every day they would sing the Hours of Our Lady and offer two Masses, one in honour of Our Lady or the Holy Trinity, and the other for the dead kin of the chantry founder. The chapels they served were attached to a cathedral or a parish church. Those established by the monarch often had pastoral duties, sometimes involving a school or hospice. In Lithuania, they appear from the late 15th century at the cathedrals of Vilnius, Varniai and Lutsk (in Janów Podlaski), and represented a considerable financial investment to establish and maintain. After the Council of Trent, they become even rarer, and concentrate more on pastoral and other educational duties. The paper discusses what a mansionary priest was, and how many of them served in the Diocese of Vilnius and other sees within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Why was it deemed meet and fit to establish a mansionariate in Lithuania at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, and how were such foundations affected by local Reform movements?

This article surveys evidence of Lithuanian social and religious life during the long fifteenth century as revealed by consistory court records from the sees of Płock, Gniezno, Lutsk and Cracow. The dynamics of church court evidence coincide with those of other aspects of Catholic life in the Grand Duchy. Building churches, chantry chapels, funding mansionary priests, selecting particular Masses to be celebrated by your chantry priest (Salve sancta Parens, the Five Wounds of Christ, the Seven Joys of Our Lady), going on pilgrimage, taking part in a procession, venerating the Blessed Sacrament, sending supplications to Rome to obtain permission to own a portable altar or choose a confessor all become much more common in the later decades of the fifteenth century. Cases before the consistory courts in Płock, Gniezno, Vilnius and Lutsk involve a wide social group and deal with a broad range of issues (not just matrimonial disputes or the hiring out of benefices between priests). What we do not find is any obsession with paganism, no use of pagan as an insult, no account of ‘pagan’ practices (or even folk customs, which later become tarred with an ideological brush). Lithuanian dioceses are clearly integrated into the Polish metropolitan sees (Gniezno and also to a lesser degree, Lwów).

This article discussed the effect of the theological thought of Duns Scotus on the outlook and activities of Lithuanian Franciscans. In Franciscan theology the Creation, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection of Our Lord are linked closely together. The idea of the Divine Omnipotence is essential for understanding Godʼs actions. After describing Scotusʼ life we examine his works and insights in theology and philosophy. His teaching was based on the spirit of the Orderʼs founder, St Francis. Scotism found disciples in Lithuania who fostered the Franciscan spirit in the country and sponsored the spread of Scotist heritage there.

A serious argument against the reach of Hamburgian Culture to the eastern Vistula is the position of material from areas to the east of the Vistula, the lack of any radiocarbon dates and the unclear geochronological context.